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President Obama is off to California for five fundraising events across two days. The events were, doubtless, scheduled before yesterday's recall election in Wisconsin, the results of which the punditry is analyzing in exceedingly close detail. Their preliminary conclusions that provide the most consolation for the losers are:

* Exit polling shows that President Obama is still running ahead of Romney in the state. The MSNBC team wore this one out last night, in spite of the fact that the exit pollsters were wrong about the race they were there to predict, calling Walker/Barrett at tossup until the polls closed and the results began coming in, at which time they "adjusted" their numbers (how do you do that?) and still got it wrong. Those taking comfort in those exit poll numbers should immediately call their brokers and buy Facebook at $38.

* We got outspent, so it is all the Supreme Court's fault. To this point, Greg Sargent quotes a teachers' union official who says, “It’s pretty clear that the voices of ordinary citizens are at permanent risk of being drowned out by uninhibited corporate spending.”

It could be that it was all about the money. Then, again, it could be that the spending of lots of that money was merely an exercise in diminishing returns. According to some polls (again with the polls), many voters had made up their minds on how they would vote more than a month before Election Day. The money spent in May, then, may have been redundant.

More by Geoffrey Norman

There is another, more straightforward and elegantly persuasive argument for why the voters decided they wanted to keep Walker in office. As Steve Hayes writes, Walker “did what he promised to do as a candidate and it worked.”

What a novel concept. One the president might consider emulating. At the very least, it might save him all those tedious fundraising trips.